The Corporate Brainwashing OF The People

By James Donahue

"Those who manipulate the organized habits and opinions of the masses constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." --Edward Bernays, assistant to William Paley, founder of CBS

The super storms, floods, extreme melting of the world glaciers and ice caps, excessive heat and drought, and strange shifts in world weather patterns have finally snapped a lot of people to an awareness that those long-quoted "experts" were wrong. The world is heating and our excessive burning of carbon fuels may be a major factor.

Consequently, the industries that rely on coal, oil, ethanol and other carbon fuels are fighting for their survival. Notice the clever bombardment of televised promotions of "clean coal" as the key to America’s continued supply of cheap power to operate our factories and electric generating plants.

Notice also the promotion financed by British Petroleum that attempts to attract tourists back to vacation spots along the Gulf of Mexico following the disastrous oil spill and fire on a company drilling rig in 2010. "Come on down," the promoters say with smiling faces. "The fishing is great." Anybody keeping up on environmental events knows better. The oil is still in that water and the sea life that once provided a rich supply of food for America is found to be deformed and filled with toxins. An acquaintance that recently flew into Tampa on a business trip told us she could still see the oil on the surface of the water from the aircraft window.

Never in our history can we remember this level of reckless efforts at the mass manipulation of the people. We are seeing it in the constant bombardment of political ads that wildly attack opponents. The Supreme Court’s controversial Citizen’s United ruling has opened the door to a multi-billion dollar secret ad campaign against incumbent President Barack Obama. Most of these spot ads are laced with half-truths, twisted information and bald-faced lies.

Will the people believe all of this propaganda? We believe it must be working because the barrage of these promotional ads has not stopped. People must be rushing to the Gulf Coast to vacation. The campaign to replace coal with clean green fuels has not worked its way into the political races. And if these things are true, then it is highly possible that Americans will walk in lock-step back to the polls in November and put the corporate-owned Republicans back into power.

Are these things going to be good for the country? Obviously not. The Republicans are vowing to do away with the first national health program ever pushed through the houses of Congress. It was a watered-down version of what the people wanted, but many see it as a start in the right direction.

The Republican plan to dramatically slash federal spending, balance the budget and create lots of jobs may be an impossible dream. Cutting that kind of spending will mean that no money will be spent in developing the badly needed green energy systems, updating our worn out infrastructure, restoring our defunct education system and providing for the poor and elderly. If these boys follow the program shown by past GOP leadership, we are in for more war, more military spending, and a continuation of the War on Drugs that means money for police, jails and prisons.

The jobs will be in the military, working for companies that subcontract with the government to serve the military or operate those prisons, and little else.

If Romney wins office, we predict that he will be unable to make much change unless voters revolt this fall and clean both houses and bring in a batch of new and progressive thinkers who have not yet fallen prey to the corporate lobbyists that flit like bats through the halls outside their chambers.

If conditions get worse, if more and more Americans lose their jobs, their pensions and possibly even their Social Security and Medicare benefits, if more and more people are forced to live in the streets and go hungry, will they revolt? The banksters are gambling that they will not.

Mind control has become the key to politics, religion and big business in the United States and all of the other industrialized nations of the world. It has become a highly studied science whose practitioners utilize their skills in advertising agencies, from behind the curtains of government and in the corporate board rooms.

These pillagers of our right to free thought and liberated life style used to be much more subtle in the way they went about their business. It was a slow process beginning with the church, our public education system and the advertisements that packed our printed news publications and radio programs. The advent of television opened a whole new avenue of propaganda that has become more and more specialized. Today it is almost impossible to escape the constant campaign to make us buy certain products, elect certain candidates, and accept certain ideologies without ever questioning their validity.

The propaganda slams our brains where ever we go. It comes at us over our car radios on the way to work. Of course it dominates the television programming. In fact it has gotten so bad that most of our television time is spent watching banks of television ads instead of the program we tuned in to watch.

If you watch a ball game, the background behind the bleachers is lighted up with advertising. Automobile race cars are decorated with the brand names of sponsors. Film producers are paid well to use certain brands of cars, beer, food and even shampoo in the movies we watch. We are forced to pay for special programs to keep away those nuisance "pop-up" ads that invade our computer screens, but many of them find ways to get through anyway.

Edward Bernay is someone few people have ever heard of. But his insight in the capability of television to control the habits and opinions of the masses were correct.

Former President Herbert Hoover, who went down in history as the president in office when the world was hit by the Great Depression, also understood what was about to befall the nation. As a Republican he perceived it as a good thing in his day. He said: "You have taken over the job of creating desire and have transformed people into constantly moving happiness machines; machines which have become the key to economic progress."

Those were the days when newspapers were the primary source of information and radio was in its infancy.